1. Field
The disclosure relates to a method, system, and article of manufacture for system recovery.
2. Background
A computational device may be susceptible to operating system failures that render the computational device unbootable even though the hardware of the computational device is fully functional. For example, the operating system that runs on the computational device may be corrupted by newly loaded errant software or by accidental destruction of critical operating system files. In certain situations, malicious viruses may deliberately attack the operating system to render the computational device unbootable or destroy the general operation of the computational device. In such a situation, a user may have to reload the operating system. Reloading the operating system from external media, such as, compact disks or digital video disks, is time consuming and may not always be practical.
A user may reboot the computational device from a previously created disk partition which is loaded with a backup operating system image that is capable of executing on the computational device. For example, if the operating system image on a first disk partition is corrupted then the backup operating system image from a second disk partition may be loaded to reboot the computational device.
A plurality of versions of an operating system can be installed on a single computational device in a plurality of directories. For example, Windows XP* and Windows 2000* may be installed on the same computational device in different directories. Even the same operating system, such as, Windows XP*, can be installed twice in two different directories of the same computational device. In certain Microsoft Windows* environments, a user may power on the computational device and select one of the plurality of directories to boot into the corresponding operating system stored in the selected directory.